Whiteville begins search for new manager

By NICOLE CARTRETTE

The City of Whiteville is not exactly up a creek without a paddle but it will soon be without a city manager. Council members announced City Manager Susan Rhodes’ resignation, effective June 30, after a two-hour closed session at the June 13 council meeting.

Council must now find an interim and replacement for her.

“This decision affects every single person living in Whiteville,” Hartwell Wright of the N.C. League of Municipalities told council at a special meeting called Monday. The search could take six months or longer, Wright said.

“Be patient, there will be times you will get anxious –stay together as much as possible,” Wright said.

Wright suggested council keep the search professional, consider making it confidential, and adopt flexible preferences rather than stringent requirements for the candidate advertisement to attract more applicants. He said many applicants might already be working for another municipality and needed to be given the option of withdrawing their names if confidentiality is lifted.

He urged council to decide up front on the rules. “One of the worst mistakes is to get into it and not know what the rules are,” he emphasized.

“As soon as practical you must hire an interim manager,” he said. Council asked him to provide a list of potential interim managers that the city could hire on a part-time basis. Many are retired managers.

Council made no decisions about qualifications, salary, preferences, or a timeline at the meeting. Mayor Dial Gray anticipates a conference will be scheduled next week to coordinate a profile for an advertisement. “I don’t think we should be in a hurry and make mistakes,” Gray said.

He said City Clerk Debbie Smith will likely coordinate future meetings with the council members.

Gray said believes it is important for the new manager to be committed to the wastewater treatment plant project. Plans for expanding and upgrading the plant were updated at the budget retreat earlier this month. Green Engineering estimates construction costs at $6.3 million for the project.

Experience

What requirements the council will set are unknown, but individual council members have mentioned preferences –one of them appears to be experience.

“I do not put as much emphasis on a certain school or degree as I do common sense and experience,” Gray said.

“In my personal opinion three to five years experience as a manager or assistant manager” should be included in the profile, Councilman Howard Jones said.

“Five or six years of experience would be worth a whole lot more than a master’s degree,” Councilmam Terry Mann said.
Salary

A competitive salary range for cities with populations between 5,000 and 10,000 is $75,000 to $85,000 per year, not including benefit packages, Wright said. The current city manager’s salary is $65,515 a year.

Gray said that if the city finds someone qualified he would assume the council would vote to pay the person a competitive amount.

However, with the population of Whiteville just slightly more than 5,000 and it being in a rural area, Mann said he would like to compare the salary with that of municipalities similar to Whiteville.

Skills

Good communication skills appear to be a quality many of the council members will be looking for in a new city manager. It is important that the individual have good working relations with supervisors and department heads, Mann said.

I would like for the person to be “real passionate about all forms of recreation and improving the quality of life in Whiteville,” Mann added.

“I think a person needs to communicate well with mayor and council,” Jones said.